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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6360086" data-attributes="member: 4937">Beautifully researched, but also pretty completely irrelevant.  The point of Gygax's aside was simply to convey that 6th level was a somebody who would normally be considered of fantastic power.  While there is a certain irony to this comment in that quite clearly 6th level is thinkable, Gygax's small exaggeration is most certainly setting indirectly expectations about what is high level.  None of your examples really touch on my point about demographics setting expectations about what is possible for NPCs to accomplish.  Gygax may be using a certain amount of irony, but the rest of his demographics suggest that characters about 10th level are rare and characters above 15th level are world shaking figures occurring in countable numbers.  With demographics that suggest that high level adventuring types are usually 7-8th level characters, there is no expectation that the ruler can simply overcome and dispatch a CR 20+ creature.   FR doesn't have such demographics which provokes a very reasonable question from the OP.  If King Azoun and his courtiers are 20th level characters and command the allegiance of many similarly high level characters, how is something like the Tarrasque not already slain through methods at least as efficient as any party of similar level PC's commanding the resources of great nations would manage?One answer is that it is just a game and thus questions like the posters are over thinking it.  The demographics of the world are meant to make for good gameplay (as for example the high level guards of Ultima IV protected its gameplay), and not to simulate an internally consistent reality.Another valid answer is that the Tarrasque knows to avoid all areas where it would be more than a nuisance so as to not get slapped down by the vastly superior prowess of the dominate human life forms.  This is the OP's idea that perhaps the Tarrasque is confined to some remote mountain valley where it doesn't trouble anyone.  Umbran's answer that maybe the Tarrasque just runs away before it gets spanked is a variation on this idea.And finally, there is the answer that if the game is meant to have an internally consistent reality, and the Tarrasque exists, and the Tarrasque is meant to be truly feared and menacing, then it can't be the case that 'King Azoun' or his like and (especially that entire army of wizards he has) exist in any great numbers, for if they did this would indeed render the reality internally inconsistent.</blockquote>

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